The thing about Brandon Wood and Wil Nieves is that they played for smart enough managers who knew a bad thing and would not play them. But that Cox fellow should just retire. What did he win in the past 15 years?

I think it captures a combination of stinkiness and playing time. A guy like Nieves may stink more, in the platonic ideal sense of a bad player, but even Riggles was smart enough to limit his playing time so the archetype of stinkitude was not soil the dirt around home plate more than 158 PAs and less than 400 innings in the field. Cox, OTOH, through senility or sentimentality, played the Melkman for 509 PAs and 1064 innings. Clearly, Riggleman is sharper than Cox at this point.

I feel like truly terrible catchers are undervalued by this because catchers tend to get less plate appearances. To say that 509 PAs for melky is better/worse? than 158 for nieves truly underestimates neives' level of suck

This could be a debate for the ages. It reminds me of the joke Woodie Allen tells in Annie Hall about the two old ladies complaining about the food at their retirement home, "The food! it's so terrible!" "Yes, and in such small portions!" With Melky, you get big portions of terrible. With Wil, you get small portions, but it is truly awful and you have to eat it.

I think it captures a combination of stinkiness and playing time. A guy like Nieves may stink more, in the platonic ideal sense of a bad player, but even Riggles was smart enough to limit his playing time so the archetype of stinkitude was not soil the dirt around home plate more than 158 PAs and less than 400 innings in the field.

And 158 PAs and 400 innings was STILL too many! There were times when a blank space in the batting order would have been better!